Hopes for the business world in the new year

To ensure that natural systems continue to function in the ways that we have come to expect, the corporate pathway toward biodiversity and ecosystem services neutral goals should include exploring forest carbon offset projects. Image: Shutterstock

By Sissel Waage

Thursday 16 January 2014

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In my home, with two young children, we end the year with discussions of the best memories of the year gone by. Over dinner, we fill scraps of paper with words such as, “reading on the sofa, under that soft green blanket,” “smelling mama’s homebaked bread” [author’s note: made from Trader Joe’s pre-made dough], or “swimming in the ocean.”

These discussions inspire my planning for the year ahead. What do I want to expose my children to in the New Year? What do I want to learn? How might we grow as individuals and as a family? This week, it occurred to me that the process could also apply to my professional life. That is, what are my hopes for the business world in 2014?

In 2014, I would like to see the private sector commit to three goals:

Embracing carbon-neutral policies, which will require decisions and investments that focus on efficiency and low-carbon and renewable energy, as well as investments in carbon sequestration activities, such as forest carbon projects.

Expanding thinking about what it means to truly value the people that businesses touch, from customers to employees to supply chain partners. This will require a range of actions, including strengthening policies for human rights and labor issues and creating clear, aspirational environmental policies around worker and community well-being, such as a transition away from the use of toxic chemicals.

Becoming biodiversity and ecosystem services neutral, or even positive, which will require businesses to galvanize the innovation power within their companies and networks to ensure that they avoid, mitigate, and offset impacts on the ecological systems upon which we all rely.

All three goals are essential to business, human, and environmental sustainability, but the last goal is worth considering in more detail because it is seldom considered at all.

This relative lack of attention to natural capital—including biodiversity and the flow of ecosystem services—is odd given that we all breathe oxygen (from plants), eat food (grown in soil), and drink freshwater (which is cycled through natural hydrological systems, not just wastewater treatment plants). Our reliance on natural systems is so fundamental that it is invisible. We assume that it will always be there for us.

To ensure that natural systems will continue to function in the ways that we have come to expect, the corporate pathway toward biodiversity and ecosystem services neutral goals should include:

Funding sustainability-focused R&D and investment business units that focus on innovation and even the creative destruction of existing products and processes that have adverse impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services—while still supporting competitiveness of the company.

Committing to sustainable materials, design, and products that eliminate the use of toxic, persistent, and bio-accumulative chemicals and materials.

Establishing sustainable sourcing goals that intertwine social and environmental considerations, such as products that are both Fair Trade and sustainably harvested.